The Effects of Using a Monolingual Textual English Corpus on Students’ Translations from Arabic into English

Résumé du mémoire de master 2

Résumé

The corpus-based approach to translation pedagogy and research has been recently gaining more interest in a number of countries. However, its significance in undergraduate translation teaching programs, especially in Lebanon, has not been explored or tested and is rarely adopted in such settings. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of using a monolingual English textual corpus on students’ translations from Arabic into English with regards to the use of collocations and phrasal verbs. The study presents a literature review on traditional and modern approaches to translation pedagogy and on the importance and problematic of translating collocations and phrasal verbs. The research design used is an experimental research with pre and post tests to study the impact of using a corpus in translation teaching. To gather enough information about teaching translation in Lebanon, a questionnaire was given to instructors and students from different universities teaching translation. To carry out the experimental study, a sample of 12 students at the Lebanese International University was chosen. The group of students were introduced to corpora and their applications in translation, and taught how to use the online Corpus of Contemporary American English to solve translational problems of collocations and phrasal verbs. The analysis of results revealed the extent to which the use of such corpus helped students in improving the quality of their translations. The study highlighted the importance of adopting a corpus-based approach in the translation classroom and the benefits it offers as compared to the traditional approach. The study also gave an insight into the perceptions of translation instructors and students on traditional translation teaching methods adopted in the classroom by conducting questionnaires in this regard. Recommendations and limitations of the study are also discussed.